Former teacher, self-training Montessorian, in my 8th year of homeschooling; now homeschooling my 2 kids and 1 from another family (he's a 16yo who would like to be referred to as "Bob"), AND looking after my 2 nieces, 5yo and 2yo.

About Me

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

PROGRESS, not perfection

It's a wonderful thing to keep in mind and completely sums up today. :)

My earlier plan I knew would never happen. The point is that I have that much planned so that it gets worked toward and there's always something to do.

I did the timer thing this morning. The 12yo said he didn't want a timer. I asked him why. He said it made him nervous and feel rushed. So I explained the point of the timer was not to get as much done as he could in that time or to finish everything in that time, but just to stay focused on work. He decided to start with math, which was fine by me, so we went to the next page from his workbook. I had him look at it and estimate how long it would take him to finish it. He said an hour. And he meant it. (No wonder he stresses out so much!) He pulled away from it at first, his fears getting the better of him, but then got into what needed to be done and did half the work without any guidance or assistance from me. I looked at the timer when he was done.

"Remember how you said you thought it would take you an hour?"

"Yes."

"It only took you 14 minutes."

A good lesson for him.

I ended up helping his sister after that at the computer, so he pretty much just had snack, hung around, etc. I then did some auditory work with him and started the WRTR phonogram cards and writing. So, we've made progress, even if his work time only got to about 45 minutes and his sister's about an hour. I'm not sure how much dd actually did, but she did read first thing, did a page of math and worked on cursive.